The Resurrection

1. ‘New Labour’ is currently impersonating our party. We want to seize back the name, preventing our enemies from using it any more. By identifying ourselves as ‘The Labour Party’ and printing membership cards, we’ll force ‘New Labour’ to react. Will they take out a High Court injunction against us? However they respond, it will trigger a public contest between ourselves and ‘New Labour’ as to who has the right to campaign and recruit members under this name.
2. John McDonnell’s ‘Labour Representation Committee’ already exists. This must form the core of any resurrected Labour Party with trade union affiliates capable of displacing ‘New Labour’. Although no decisions have as yet been made, the LRC can be expected to re-name itself ‘the Labour Party’ once it splits from ‘New Labour’, as seems likely soon.
3. ‘The Labour Party’ was the name printed on every ballot when we won the May 1st 1997 General Election and subsequent elections. ‘New Labour’ dared not print its name on any ballot paper in any election: Blair and his coterie knew they would lose if they did. We won the vote, but they stole the power. It’s time we seized back that power.

While our party is nothing if it’s not an all-night mayhem party – the party to end all parties – our more serious political friends have been demanding to read the small print. At the risk of sounding boring, here’s what’s been worked out so far.

SERIOUS STUFF. LONGEST AND MOST TURGID VERSION:

1. THE Labour Party is the PARTY OF LABOUR. ‘Labour’ is meant in the dictionary sense, as in ‘labour is the source of all value’. Our job is secure political representation for our class. We oppose capitalism and will be replacing it with freedom and socialism, guaranteeing a home, a job and a future for all.
2. THE Labour Party is a broad church. But not so broad as to include free-market ideologues, benefit-cheat, tax-dodging MPs, war criminals, corporate and financial criminals or fascists. We’ve nothing in common with ‘New Labour’, an entryist organization of Thatcherites who for too long have been impersonating our party. Their ‘Labour Party’ is now thankfully dead. Surviving remnants may cling to the hope that it can somehow be ‘reclaimed’. We say: Repudiate the corpse! Sever all links with it! Fight with us to bring LABOUR to POWER!
3. The Party of Labour is not wedded to any specific ideology. As an umbrella uniting multiple ideological strands, we view ourselves as a direct action working class Parliament. The Labour Party welcomes affiliations from all sections of the trade union, co-operative, green, socialist, communist, anarchist and anticapitalist movements.
4. In the past, Labour has been an electoral party. Yes, we’ve shouted at anarchists, expelled socialists, barred communists. Yes, we’ve believed in the British parliamentary system. Yes, we’ve spent ordinary workers’ trade union subscriptions to sponsor career politicians eager to become Councillors and MPs. Yes, we’ve repeatedly won victories in elections.
5. But why keep fighting elections if the system keeps denying us power? Why sponsor people in Parliament if they switch sides once in office for their own private gain? Beyond electoral politics lies the struggle for real power in the workplace, in the streets, in the media and in society as a whole. Having gained legitimacy on the electoral plane, our task now is to translate office into power. This means mobilizing our extra-parliamentary strength and overcoming the resistance of the rich.
6. Are we advocating a proletarian dictatorship? We want freedom, not dictatorship. But the rich have enjoyed their dictatorship for too long. They’ve fixed things to ensure that regardless of how we all vote, they’ll remain in power. The time to turn the tables on them is now. How can you have democracy without dictating back to the dictators? Democracy means stopping politicians from accepting bribes. It means deploying the full force of the law. Instead of one law for the rich and another for the poor, it means applying the same law to all. Let’s have a crackdown on crime – starting at the very top. In a free and democratic society, no-one is above the law.
7. THE Labour Party under present circumstances has no special interest in holding parliamentary elections. Before yet another election, why not act on the mandate we already have? It was not ‘New Labour’ whose name was printed on every ballot when we defeated the Tories on May 1, 1997. On that date and in each subsequent election, the victorious party was ours. The people voted Labour but the capitalists stole the power. Let’s take it back.